Guilt.

I'm literally trembling with nerve-wracking self-disgust as I write this.
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When I was 10 or so, I remember being left alone on some occasions with my then 2-3 year old sister. My memory of that time is hazy; I don't remember quite clearly at the time how I knew about sexual pleasure/masturbation, but I did. I don't know whether I started masturbating before or after this happened.

But it happened. I remember rubbing against my sister. Not once, repeatedly, maybe 3 or so times. I remember her being asleep during most of the occasions when it happened but I'm also sure that at least once she was conscious while I did it. I don't remember what her reaction was but I know it wasn't extreme or something. I even remember making her hold my penis once.
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It stopped then and I didn't have any memory of it until I was 12 or so. Then, I remembered, and...

I tortured myself every day because of it. I stayed up hours at night agonizing over it. I made up mantras to remind myself what I did and what I deserved because of it. Every time a rape or pedophilia case would come up on TV, I'd feel moral disgust at the offenders but then I'd remember that I'm no different than they are. (I'm not attracted to children; child porn disgusts me. I think I'd kill myself if I really were a pedophile. But that was what I told myself. Over, and over, and over again.)

This is not the only thing I feel guilty for. I remember being attracted towards my aunts for a brief period after those years. I remember experimenting with objects sexually. But this is the main driving force of so much.
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A year ago, I told my best friend of four years what I did. He, at first, thought I was probably dreaming. I told him I couldn't take the cowardly risk of assuming it was so. He didn't react that much; he said I should just forget about it and that it was a childhood thing I did and have no control over. I also told the girl I was romantically interested in at one time, and she dismissed it as "no big deal," excusing me on account that I was a child.

I told the school therapist (who I trusted surprisingly fast) about it. I broke down when I told him. I started rocking back and forth. He somewhat egged me on to remember more graphic details. I did. I remember feeling like crap for the rest of the day. But I was also somewhat relieved.

In a later meeting, he told me that this was surely at the cause of my immense self-hatred, my crippling inner lack of self-confidence (in spite of "clear and apparent talent," he said that just to make me feel better, most likely), my Jonah complex, and many other issues I had. He suggested that this might be why I was a daydreamer, why I was a thinker (or so he described; I in no manner consider myself sufficiently intelligent or creative to be a "thinker")- I wanted to escape from the memory of what I did.

He only briefly said this, but this devastated me. So this is the reason why I love ethics? Is this the reason why my conscience is so powerful, powerful enough to make me feel moral repulsion when I or someone else commit the slightest moral wrong? Is this why I'm extremely interested in religion, psychology (obviously cognitive and especially Freudian and Jungian), and philosophy? I expanded and probably exaggerated his suggestion, but still.

(This doesn't affect my persona. I am good at wearing masks.)
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I no longer want to see redemption flicker then die out. I want a clear and definitive answer both from myself and from others. University starts in a few months; I want it settled down before then. I cannot work on myself should it not be settled. And it is: is redemption possible? Can I forgive myself; would others accept me should I tell them of this? I cannot appeal to some unknown god in the skies; I believe in none. My counselor said that my telling of this is redemption enough. But...

I am sick and tired of this.

Addendum:
I can't go to therapy for at least several months; I'm still in school and my parents would have an issue with it. The therapist (who is unfortunately no longer working at my school) told me that my sister remembers nothing of it, that it didn't affect her at all, and that I shouldn't tell her or my (conservative, Middle-Eastern) family. But... I feel dishonest. I feel dishonest when I think about how people don't really know the act of utter evil that I did, that their entire image of me would change once they do.

The events you describe were just childish exploration. You need not feel guilty. You sister is unharmed and does not remember.
I more concerned about why you hate yourself, you are focusing on these events with your sister, its like you are looking for reasons/excuses to hate yourself.
Is your relationship with your parents good?
You have committed no crime stop punishing yourself.

I got my sister to lie on top of me when I was a child in order to show her some abuse I was having. But it has taken me some time to realise that I was a child and this was acting out and exploration behaviour. I understand how bad it makes you feel but I also think that you need to try to find a way to tell yourself that you were a child. Yes what you did was not ideal but I think you likely had a reason for doing it, whatever that may be and I think that you need to acknowledge how young you were.

Please dont beat yourself up about this.

Cracked

I don't think this has anything to do with your experience with your sister. Something more is underlining this. A general negative feeling of yourself. And that is caused by? Possibly important relationships that should have given you love, did the opposite. In other words, Your telling yourself that the primary relationships you had as a child were right when they shamed you and told you negative things about yourself. Now your looking for reasons to show that they were right.

Ive been through allot of stuff in my life. Ive found now I don't have any guilt anymore about anything. I know to much about this world. My only crime is that I was born into this. I was and am powerless over being human. I was just born.

longer term therapy on this one.. Thats what I think.. Theirs a deeper story to all of this I think.

Take what you like and leave the rest. Its just my opinion..

Im glad you shared this, it took allot of courage, your a good person, keep searching,

Hi,
I read your post and the replies so far and I'm sorry that you are feeling so bad about something which is perfectly normal childhood behavior. Just to be certain, I looked for some proper research to back up what I believed.... and its true. Here is a link to a journal article from Journal of Mental Health Counseling:

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qs ... 5007674237

Research shows that what you did is quite common, a normal part of child development and not particularly harmful in itself.

One of the replies suggests that perhaps your 'real' guilt might be related to something else, something deeper. For example... just a general sense of shame and self loathing of yourself as a person, and you are telling yourself that its because of something you did, because that's the only thing you can think of which makes sense to you.

Certain parenting styles can cause children to grow up with a deep sense of shame and inadequacy about themselves. If your parents often criticized you as a person, rather than your behavior, this can cause a deep sense of shame to develop. For example.... if you accidentally drop and break something.... are you told that you are a clumsy, careless person or are you told that accidents sometimes happen and we need to be more careful when we pick up things made of glass.

I was criticized as a person much of the time by my parents, not that they meant to be abusive, its just what they knew.... that's how they were raised. Sometimes children raised in religious families are made to feel guilty in general about perfectly normal things, because of the way spiritual teachings have been misinterpreted by religious organizations as a way to control people.

I think its great that you are looking for the cause of your unhelpful feelings, CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) can be helpful in teaching us how to look at our own patterns of thought and behavior and false beliefs, so that we can learn new ways of thinking about ourselves, so that we can start behaving in more functional and self enhancing ways.... and of course become happier.

Personal growth, self improvement and adult evolution is a life long journey, you don't need to 'be perfect' before you start college. Allow yourself to be human.

Trust in relationships is something which grows over time, we are not supposed to share our most intimate or painful feelings with people we just meet, not even a girlfriend of 6 months if it doesn't feel comfortable.

Stop punishing yourself for something quite normal you did as a 10 year old. Enjoy appropriate adult sexuality now. If you still have overwhelming feelings of guilt and shame, maybe some therapy to find the real cause would be worthwhile.

... all just my opinion of course.

The events you describe were just childish exploration. You need not feel guilty. You sister is unharmed and does not remember.
[...]
You have committed no crime stop punishing yourself.

I read your post and the replies so far and I'm sorry that you are feeling so bad about something which is perfectly normal childhood behavior.

The age gap is what's especially agonizing. I think that had it been less than 9 years, I would have felt somewhat better about the issue. And the fact that I think so makes me even more disgusted with myself.

Is your relationship with your parents good?

They're not ideal; my father was absent from my life because he worked abroad and has only recently permanently returned. My mother, on the other hand, mostly neglected me during my childhood and later on used me to vent her frustration (probably because of the absence of my father and some unfortunate circumstances that are now resolved). But I'm mostly self-sufficient, so I don't think that that affected me this much.

I don't think I'll last much longer with this guilt.

But I'm mostly self-sufficient, so I don't think that that affected me this much.

I don't think I'll last much longer with this guilt.

JunkAccumulator

You say your neglectful childhood did not "affect you much"
Then you say "I don't think I'll last much longer"
Why?
The guilt you feel sounds more like a transference, of guilt, shame and inadequacy that your mother laid on you, like take_too 2 says.

take_too2
Certain parenting styles can cause children to grow up with a deep sense of shame and inadequacy about themselves. If your parents often criticized you as a person, rather than your behavior, this can cause a deep sense of shame to develop.
Sometimes children raised in religious families are made to feel guilty in general about perfectly normal things, because of the way spiritual teachings have been misinterpreted by religious organizations as a way to control people.

Listen to what everyone is saying;
YOU DO NOT NEED TO FEEL GUILTY.
This guilt you have seems like a form of self harm.

I read the description of your early relationship with your parents.....absent father, neglectful mother who used her child you to fulfill her own emotional needs. This is a damaging situation for any child to grow up in.

A couple of days ago I was watching some videos of the results of recent research related to aging (from Berkley University). Now this is science....based on reputable and rigorous academic methods of data collection and analysis.... so this is truth, not some woo woo idea out of a self help book.

This particular study was related to early childhood experience in the family of origin and later levels of emotional regulation and happiness. What they found was that early negative experiences from poor quality parenting usually started to show its harmful effects much later in the persons life, rather than immediately. This usually presented as increasing anxiety and depression, an inability to regulate negative emotions and a decrease in satisfaction with life. There were also physical markers like cortisol, something about insulin and changes in blood pressure.

What surprised me the most about the study was that the most damaging and harmful kind of parenting, the one which resulted in the most long lasting problems, seemed to be the cold, neglectful kind.... what they called 'the non-nurturing environment". (more damaging than just a generally conflict ridden family that fights a lot)

I say it surprised me, but really it depressed me because that's the kind of family I come from. The reason I'm mentioning this is because it confirms what I wrote in my earlier response, before I had learned about what kind of parenting you experienced.

When bad feelings arise.... seemingly out of nowhere, its normal to want to find a cause or to try and understand... so we can 'fix it'. I've been doing this for years with my anxiety.... it would come up suddenly, catching me off guard and I would look around for a possible cause... a person, a situation... anything even slightly threatening would work so that I would have something to avoid in hopes of avoiding the bad feeling. Is this what you did when you were 12? Did feelings of guilt and shame just seem to come from nowhere and so you looked for a cause?

You wrote that you initially forgot what happened and then the memory came back when you were 12. All kinds of hormonally driven emotions and thoughts make most 12 year old boys lives uncomfortable at best, even in the most loving and healthy families.... so its not surprising that you started to feel particularly guilty and shameful at that age.... started looking for reasons and causes for your sudden emotions. You also wrote that your memory of what happened with your sister is ... blurry or fuzzy... I think you wrote.... if you know any thing about the science of how we store and recover memories....you would know that most likely, what you are remembering didn't actually happen in the way you are remembering it.... it might not have actually happened at all.

I don't know if it really did or not. But from what you have written, combined with what I know from my own experiences of early childhood, and current science (psychology and neurobiology) I'm certain that your feelings of guilt and shame come from your early inadequate parenting.... and you are just pinning it on one specific event, which may or may not have actually happened ... because....... it kind of makes sense to you and, by doing that, it protects you from having to look deeper and possibly remember and feel more painful things from when you were even younger and more vulnerable and you didn't get your needs met, but instead were burdened with having to deal with the role reversal of emotionally supporting your parent.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope this really is just about you feeling guilty for doing something which culturally is considered inappropriate, (but normal in childhood). Because that would be an easy thing to 'fix'

My sense is that you are hanging onto your explanation because on some level you know that there is more underneath and you are just not ready to go there yet. .... which if fine, we all have to heal in our own ways in our own time.

I really don't know what else to write, I wish there was an easy answer. Being overwhelmed with guilt and shame is hell, thinking that we deserve it makes it a hundred times worse.

Whatever caused you to feel so bad about yourself..... is a lie. Be good to yourself, you are obviously a caring person... so direct some of that care towards yourself and I hope that one day you are able to see a suitable therapist who can help you start feeling better.

Maybe print out your post and responses and put them away for when you do see a new therapist, it might be a good starting point. When you get to college, if you possibly can, take some Positive Psychology classes if they are available.... it will teach you how to restructure your thinking and behavior so you can let go of negativity and start to feel better about yourself.

New research shows that the actual physical structure of our brain is not fixed once we become adults, like they used to believe. This is really good news because it means that even if we did inherit a crappy neurological hand of cards via our genes, or if we got a less than perfect start to life via our imperfect human parents... its possible to actually 'rewire' our own brains through thinking and behaving in new ways, so that actual new connections and pathways are set up.... and we become.... naturally.... happier and more functional.

The younger we are when we make a start on this..... the easier it is. You don't have to live with feelings of guilt.... you have a choice... but you have to make that decision to do something about it..... you are just as worthy of happiness as anyone else. But its up to you.

I agree with everything you have said take_two2

What surprised me the most about the study was that the most damaging and harmful kind of parenting, the one which resulted in the most long lasting problems, seemed to be the cold, neglectful kind.... what they called 'the non-nurturing environment". (more damaging than just a generally conflict ridden family that fights a lot)

My family is the cold type, I truly felt 'invisible', lost, as a child, later as I got older experiencing depression/disassociation (its a long list ) Do I blame my parents? You're f####g right I do, 100%.
I would have rather lived in arguing even violent home. At least I would have know I existed! And bruises show, they are self explanatory I might have even got some help.

JunkAccumulator. I think you are suffering from toxic shame.
That Loathing Feeling www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver